Cycling UK Forum

I keep hearing this and do not fully understand. Is the implication that in the 1980's we did not do as much?
This is one reason I hear for people not having the time to cook properly and spend time interacting with their offspring.

Or is the modern rush so the people can watch X flopped and other such stuff and the need to be forever using social media?

What is the rush now?

It's the 21st C version of "The dog ate my homework". The idea that what with us doing 18hr shifts down the kipper mines we are busier than we were 30 years ago is tosh. That people are incapable of managing their time, delegating or just saying no and consider an all day shopping trip to be a weekly requirement is another thing all together.

Depends on the person of course. But don't most families now have both parents working? Whereas even when I were a lad, stay at home Mums was the norm. Plus commute times have increased, meaning less time at home.

+ for some families kids have to be taken everywhere rather than getting there under their own steam.

'Everyone's in a hurry to go nowhere fast' that's what i say to myself a when a a maniac behind the wheel roars past me on the road at high speed.

Enjoy the moment you're in - you won't get it back.

The other evening I had a delivery from a courier. It was 8pm and he started work at 7am. One of my 6 boxes of stuff was labelled 48Kg.
Just a decent ordinary bloke trying to feed his family, he didn't seem to think it was anything unusual.

Any of the moaners on this thread care to say how they earn a living?

In the '80's we'd write a letter, and at a push fax it, and a few days or weeks later we'd get a reply that we would then respond to with another letter. Today we send it off as an email, a few minutes later the reply is back and we generally are expected to respond in a further few minutes.

If I wanted to find something out I would go down the library and browse the catalogues, order up the book or publication I wanted and expect to have it in a week or two unless I splashed out on the BLL fax service to send a paper. Now I Google it and in a few seconds have the answer and a download to read.

If I wanted to buy something I would browse round the shops and either buy what was available or perhaps order it for collection in a week or so. Now I order on line and expect instant gratification from the courier company the next morning.

Before the mid '80's if I wanted to speak to someone I either travelled to meet them or would arrange a phone call when we were both at our desks. Now I call their mobile and have the conversation right away.

Things just happen much faster these days which means there are far fewer gaps while you are waiting for something to happen. And that makes life busier in general. Its easy to forget that iphones are only 6 years old, Facebook only 9 Google only 15 and the web 23.

531colin wrote:Any of the moaners on this thread care to say how they earn a living?

I spent many years working long hours both day and night. During the winter months the average was 16 hours a day. But am at a loss to understand why there is this modern thing about life style and this being a reason for some of the bad driving standards.

Mark1978 wrote:But don't most families now have both parents working? Whereas even when I were a lad, stay at home Mums was the norm. Plus commute times have increased, meaning less time at home.

Quite. Goods have become cheaper, but the cost of putting a roof over your head now consumes a much higher proportion of income, so that a double income is a necessity for most younger couples. There are many bad aspects to this, but one is that there is no spare labour capacity in the family that can be utilised to care for each other, or should redundancy or ill-health strike, be exchanged for income to keep the wolf from the door. Part of the cause is rent seeking in housing, childcare, and in healthcare.

Why have we let it get this way?

Helicoptor parenting seems to be the norm these days, absorbing a lot of spare time. Shopping time can be cut right down using the interweb to search for and buy anything, and using things like the Tesco home delivery service can save lots of time, especially using favourites. Traffic delays seem to have increased wasting your time. Went to Reading yesterday to search for a digital photography book. The selection in Smiths and Waterstones was abysmal. Searched on Amazon and was spoilt for choice. Downloaded some samples to read, made a choice and had the book on my tablet ready to read in minutes, half the retail price. Put a free Kindle App on the PC so I can open the book in a window alongside Adobe Lightroom. Huge time savings there, and it showed up the futility of high street shopping trips. Life is lived at a fast pace these days, we are all much more effective at getting what we want.


Al

al_yrpal wrote:Traffic delays seem to have increased wasting your time.

I forgot to mention that many people younger people find they can't afford to buy a house near to where they work, so end up commuting. This wastes further time, and money, and clogs up the roads, so people are even more tired and irritable at the end of the day.

I certainly worked hard in the '80s. I can remember many 05:00 starts to catch trains or 'planes to site meetings and not getting home until 23:00 that evening. Everyone in my office was working equally as hard. I don't think "hard working families" are working any harder, or longer hours, today.

To answer TonyR's point about immediacy: yes, everyone requires answers to emails immediately and the ways of working have changed drastically but I don't hold they have necessarily got better. Certain things, like Google, are amazing but back in the '80s we had tried and tested systems which were very productive. For example I would come back from a site meeting and hand my scribbled meeting notes to the secretary, she was skilled in her job, knew the projects in hand, and would put a typed draft on my desk by the time I'd taken my coat off and made a cup of tea. A cursory glance and I could approve it for distribution. Now my architect friends tell me they type up their meeting's minutes at home in the evening because it's the only time they have without interruption. That secretary was a shared resource between a dozen design staff; I have no doubt her contribution to the productive effort was worth many times her salary. I don't see the same dozen designers being equally productive today because all they do is answer emails - and write on forums!

We also had two dependable postal deliveries, and late evening collections. I could reliably put documents into the sorting office's post box on my cycle home at 21:00 knowing they would be delivered first thing the following morning.

Immediacy creates other time-sapping problems. Now on multi-discipline projects it's common for all the consultants to email in-progress drawings every evening. This means that each design team in each discipline's office now spends most mornings simply digesting what the other consultants did yesterday. Productivity has taken a nose-dive.

People in the UK watch 30 hours of TV per week.

Add the hours people spend looking at their mobile phones or shopping for non-essential items and the idea that we are a nation of busy people is a myth.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/232713 ... -than-ever

4.2 hours per day? More like 2 for me I'd say. But the notion of people 'watching TV' these days is rather blurred, it's often just on while you're doing other things, e.g. I'm often browsing this forum with the TV on in the background.

Mark1978 wrote:4.2 hours per day? More like 2 for me I'd say. But the notion of people 'watching TV' these days is rather blurred, it's often just on while you're doing other things, e.g. I'm often browsing this forum with the TV on in the background.

As with Mark, the TV, or rather at this moment the TV is playing a radio station, while I browse the 'net and wait the interminable wait for son to get his a**e shifted so we can sort bikes into van ...... and go cycling with junior club